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For this conversation you have to define "right," and that's .. . not easy. The best definition I've seen is that a "Right to" is just a way of saying "we all agree that this is the right (thing) to (do)." Example: musicians have a "right to" copyright because they wrote the song. I have a "right to" own my house because I've paid money for it to other people who had a "right to" it and they paid money and so forth going right back to the original European immigrant who came over here, kicked out or killed all the native americans that smallpox hadn't already taken care of, and staked his claim. Your grandfather has a "right to" his Social Security check because he paid into the system for decades and that was the deal. Do lobbyists have the "right to" own our political system? . . . So do we all agree that we should try to make sure, at minimum, that everyone in our society doesn't die of starvation or due to lack of basic necessities like shelter and clothing? Ok then. If so, then the "right (thing) to (do)" is to fund nationalized health care, i.e., people have a "right to" health care. wateroverfire posted:
quote:No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Mar 2, 2015 |
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Mar 2, 2015 16:10
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wateroverfire posted:Can you lay that argument out, because it doesn't seem to follow. Any 'negative' or 'positive' right you can state will necessarily imply a converse obligation. It's just a rhetorical framing trick. Edit: you can restate any negative right as a positive right and vice versa. It's just rhetoric, not substantive. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Mar 2, 2015 |
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Mar 2, 2015 20:59
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Effectronica posted:Actually, it isn't. If a right supposedly is valued but is regularly infringed without consequence, it does not really exist. Eh, *now* you're getting debatable I think. What about if a theoretical possible enforcement tool exists? Say, African American civil rights in the Jim crow era. How about the right yo be free of warrantless surveillance right now?
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Mar 2, 2015 21:06
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Effectronica posted:Well, that's the thing. We call the US racist in part because while there are theoretically equal rights, in practice those rights are not defended equally. Similarly, the right to privacy is effectively dead because of the push towards panopticon, even though the legal justification for it exists. When I say "X has the right to Y," though, I'm not just making a descriptive statement about the current system as it exists now. I'm also making a prescriptive, normative, affirmative statement about how the system should be. We may not currently be free from warrantless surveillance, but we have the right to be so free, we should be so free. Whether a "right" is currently enforceable isn't the issue; the issue is whether or not it should be enforceable. That's the real question that "rights" language addresses. To invoke the language of rights is not to describe, it is to advocate. wateroverfire posted:For instance, your right not to be killed does not obligate the police, or anyone else, anyone to protect your life. They may investigate after the fact but they're looking after society's interest rather than yours. No, that's not what I mean. What I mean is that for any given right, whether you state it as negative or positive is purely semantic. To take your example, your passive right to not be killed is also affirmatively your right to active self-defense. It's just a shift from passive to active voice, not a substantive logical difference.
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Mar 2, 2015 21:27
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Effectronica posted:Okay, but I'm not just describing the system. Like, one of the signs that Americans were extremely racist is that the average person would not defend black rights. Rights as a social construction are something that require active support, and Americans often don't have that much active support for our rights outside of the governmental aspect of it. Ok, fair point, way too few Americans do care about the right to be free from surveillance, etc. DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:Whenever someone describes something as a "right", I take it as they mean it is a good idea but cannot or will not articulate why. Because "rights" are these nebulous things that apparently reflect the Realm Of Forms or the Natural Law or the Will of George Washington or whatever they aren't subject to analysis or falsifiability. Oh, I can articulate why (for example, since this is a right to life thread) universal health care is "should." It makes more utilitarian sense overall as proven by the European and Canadian models, it's the Christian thing to do, it's in accord with the principles of Full Communism, etc. Come to think of it, I can't think of a single moral system apart from full blown Ayn Rand "objectivism" that doesn't hold up providing health care to those in need as a high moral virtue. But yeah, I think the appropriate response to an affirmative statement of "People have the right to X" is the question "why do you think that?"
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Mar 2, 2015 21:40
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OwlBot 2000 posted:Way to miss the point. TwoQuestions isn't saying that he wouldn't swerve, it's a thought experiment designed to show that a strict adherence to negative rights and negative rights only produces "immoral" results. The driver isn't killing the man, because the car is self-driving, he just isn't taking POSITIVE action to not kill the man. Under a strict Negative Rights regime, that would be OK. And that isn't a result many people like Well, he still made a positive, arguably reckless decision to get in the self driving car and rely on its safety, and the company selling the car made the positive decision to sell it. In terms of legal liability this isn' t that complicated -- which is part of why you can't yet buy a self driving car.
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Mar 3, 2015 02:07
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wateroverfire posted:
I'm aware of the history. I, too, have taken college philosophy courses! Just because something has "been a thing in philosophy for a long time" doesn't mean it isn't also fundamentally a semantic quibble :P The criticism I'm raising isn't some brand new thing -- it's been one of the major counterarguments against positive & negative rights theory for a very long time. Even imposing a "negative" obligation to "not murder" will in practical terms require people to take positive overt action to avoid murdering in some instances (for example, switching a trolley car onto a different track). It's fundamentally not possible to make that kind of distinction and have it remain valid in the real world. Ultimately, there's no positive right that can't be rephrased as a negative right (right to not be prevented from X) and vice versa. It's an ivory-tower distinction without practical validity. The reason -- I believe, at least -- that positive/negative rights theory is so popular is not that it's valid; it's that it allows the the convenient, superficial rationalization and trivialization of what are actually very difficult moral dilemmas. It's easy for an ivory-tower philosopher -- or a wealthy man -- to say "you may have a right to life, but it's only negative, and I have a right to be free from theft, so you can't steal bread from me to eat, even though you're starving." This is a very convenient view for libertarians, wealthy people, and other folks who want to have clean consciences while also actively ignoring the plight of the less fortunate. In practical terms though as a society we have to actually address the problem of the poor and starving with something more than negative rights theory; we have to actually look at the competing rights and weigh them against each other and find an optimal solution. This is why Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables is initially imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread to feed a starving child. Under the prevailing legal codes and legal system of the day, he was clearly in the wrong; but he had no other course of action and would otherwise have died, as would the child; the law expected him and his family to just passively accept starvation. This is why things like an actively redistributive public welfare system are a moral imperative. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Mar 3, 2015 |
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Mar 3, 2015 13:59
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wateroverfire posted:You're right, I retract my absolute statement. Semantic quibbles are indeed like academic catnip! To reduce this to mathematics, a negative number can always be expressed as a positive number multiplied by negative one. Similarly, to subtract from one group is always to add to another group, and vice-versa. For any statement of rights "X", that right can be expressed as -1*(x), and statement of positive right X imposes some corresponding duty of -X (either on the individual in question or on some other party). An obligation to "refrain from killing" is, inherently, an obligation to take positive action to *avoid* killing. An positive obligation on others to "keep you alive" inherently and necessarily implies a "negative" obligation to refrain from taking actions that would kill you. So on, so forth. My argument is that in reality the implications of those "two rights" are not substantively different -- it's a false distinction. It is merely convenient to believe that the implications are different. In reality, if we accept a "right to not be killed," , then we must, as a matter of logic, acknowledge some basic "right to life", some converse obligation on the part of society generally to support and maintain that life. You say "that way lies madness," but that isn't a logical objection, it's just an acknowledgment that this is a difficult problem with radical implications. The real issue is the extent to which that "right to life" can be or must be weighed against and balanced with everyone else's competing rights. Jean Valjean's sister's child had a fundamental right to life and a right to not starve to death. The baker had a property right to the loaf of bread that Valjean stole. Hugo pointed out this contradiction and the inherent evil that prioritized the baker's property right over the child's life in his novel. The eventual societal compromise that we reached (in America, at least) to resolve this dilemma was to establish public assistance programs, such as food stamps, funded by tax revenue. In other situations the analysis will of course be different, and in some cases (for example, end-of-life health care costs) we're still as a society wrestling to find the best answer. These questions are hard. The "positive/negative rights" fallacy is just a facile trivialization of fundamentally difficult ethical problems. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Mar 3, 2015 |
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Mar 3, 2015 16:21
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TwoQuestions posted:
IN practical terms, you have to rub their nose in it, break the privilege bubble. Compulsory public service can be a good way to do this and it's one major reason why a lot of ivy-league-type institutions have service requirements for graduation. Alternatively, there's always storming the bastille.
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Mar 3, 2015 21:58
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Dead Reckoning posted:
Didn't say it was a good alternative! Though on the whole modern France is probably better off than it otherwise would have been? Maybe?
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Mar 3, 2015 22:53
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wateroverfire posted:
Effectronica posted:Open-ended obligations, so long as they are concomitant with the realization that they are impossible to actually fulfill but every little bit helps, are superior to closed obligations, which invite inhumane behavior once they are fulfilled. Yes! This is why orthodox Christianity and Marxism are both extroardinarily radical philosophies! If being a good person were easy, everyone would do it! That said, a number of philosophers have tried to address this issue somewhat more formally. For example, one recommended reading would be John Rawl's Theory of Justice.
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Mar 5, 2015 16:21
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